How To Repair A Round Porch Column

Round Forest Column Repair / Replacement for Porches
Porch Column Restore or Supersede: Assessment of a Porch Repair Durability Over 30 Years

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Wood column installation, troubleshooting repairs: how to repair or replace a porch column.

This article describes the inspection, repair, or installation of both round and foursquare woods columns ofttimes used on porches and sometimes used in building interiors.

Columns that divide, lean, curve, sag or rot are oftentimes more than a cosmetic problem: ofttimes the column is also serving to support a porch roof or other building features. We describe the procedure for repairing porch columns and we examine the condition of the repaired and replaced porch columns at the time of original work and again at the same porch thirty years later in 2022.

We also provide an ARTICLE Alphabetize for this topic, or yous tin can try the page tiptop or bottom SEARCH BOX every bit a quick way to find data you lot need.

Woods Porch Columns: causes of damage, methods of repair or replacement

Causes of Damage to Round Wood Porch Columns

Wooden columns have been used on buildings for centuries; the Poughkeepsie abode at 57 Due south M Artery, shown at left and whose renovation nosotros began in 1985 and whose renovation will be finished when all of the home's owners have died, included repairs to a porch whose roof, columns, floor, and floor structure had been rotted by decades of neglect and of course leaks.

That's Laura Waterman and Katie the Certified Environmental Inspector dog on the front end porch of this home before repairs were begun in 1985. In 2022 the home stood empty and in need of repairs again.

Here we describe repairs to classical Doric style hollow lock stave wooden porch columns. We depict the original repair work and then we examine the durability of that work thirty years later. This habitation, originally synthetic in 1900, enjoyed a forepart porch across the width of the building. At that place from 1900 through the 1940's it was common for Poughkeepsie-ites to relax on the porch in the evening while an occasional automobile passed upward or down Grand Artery.

Past the 1970's the home had been covered by aluminum siding, suspended ceilings had been installed inside, and every bit part of an extensive renovation, the front porch columns, rotted and split up, needed repair or replacement.

Actually a footling rot on a round hollow wood post is not the worst problem one encounters. More serious harm to porch columns includes crushing column bases or plinth blocks, damage by rot, termites, or carpenter ants that, when combined with the sloping porch floor and mayhap with a sagging porch construction, places an un-fifty-fifty load on the cavalcade from forepart to back or side to side causing columns to split, lean, or even collapse. .

Choosing Replacement Porch Column Shapes & Profiles: Entasis is important

Considering near round wood columns and certainly all of the larger sized columns were used on such homes are hollow they were built using techniques similar to butt-making and in fact I call them hollow stave columns. Strips of wood with modest tongue and groove sides are glued together to form the cavalcade.

And so the column is given entasis - illustrated by my sketch below. Entasis is a colulmn shape or profile formed past a convex curve designed to provide a pleasing class that was originally figured out by the Greeks and shown on classical columns. You'll meet that entasis is tricky: information technology's not a symmetric curve.

Yet when viewed from a distance the columns look straight. Entasis was used in the Egyptian pyramids but is virtually associated with the columns found in the Classical Period in Hellenic republic. In Cathay entasis was discussed after, in 1103 by Yingzao Fashi. [Wikipedia at REFERENCES]

[Click to overstate any image]

If you lot really build a column without entasis, as were the ugly aluminum columns nosotros considered as replacements, the column looks weird when in place - excessively tapered from lesser to acme. Kudos to Greece.

Of three most cavalcade tiptop or capital designs, Corinthian, Doric, or Ionic, the simplest and smoothest is the Doric column design, shown here. Shine-surfaced Doric columns are the design most unremarkably plant on wood porch columns.

Repair or Replacement Procedures for Rotted, Split, or Damaged Porch Columns

Anyhow, a hollow stave cavalcade, when exposed to uneven loads by the weight of the roof pressing down on a column that rests on a rotting or improperly shaped plinth block (base of operations) wants to dissever. So column repairs will include both gluing back the split column staves and cutting/replacing rotted sections. For a wood column that is smashed beyond repair, don't despair.

The divide shown in the hollow wood column at above correct tin can be repaired only I do not recommend just injecting epoxy into the open joints: you lot're making the cavalcade diameter ever wider and request for more damage in the time to come.

A proper repair involves removing the column, opening the joints a flake further and blowing them clean and dry. Then gum is inserted and strap clamps are used to re-clamp the column to its original dimensions.

At higher up left yous can see that harm to porch columns and often the porch floor usually begins at the porch roof or soffit and box beam that bears on the column tops. Leaky porch roof built-in gutters send water into the box beam and porch soffit where it rots those components likewise every bit leaking into the columns below.

Encounter EAVES TROUGH, INTEGRAL GUTTERS for details of how this porch and its eaves trough gutters were repaired.

What Happens When You Wrap a Habitation in Aluminum?

In a higher place y'all can see at to a higher place left the water stains on the soffit and the box beam supporting the porch roof besides as at the summit of our circular stave wood porch column. Mrs. Perkins, the housekeeper for Mr. Perkins until his wife died, became Mrs. Perkins #2 and lived in this domicile for ensuing decades.

In the 1960's Mrs. Perkins #2 accepted a contractor'south offering to embrace the entire outside of the habitation in aluminum: aluminum siding and aluminum wrap covered all of the home's trim from top to bottom.

Wrapping a home in "no maintenance" aluminum was highly-seasoned to Mrs. Perkins who was facing a costly home paint job, only if the trim and siding are not properly installed to keep water out of the surfaces they cover (or to let it out if information technology enters), the result spells trouble for later on owners such every bit Laura and Katie. For example, at the habitation's front end porch the aluminum wrapped around the box beam supporting the front end porch acted as a gutter to trap leaks from in a higher place around the beam causing both beam rot and porch column rot.

Take a wait at the column top (to a higher place right) and notice those dark vertical lines: the column staves were coming un-glued. In wider column segments and particularly nearly the column base of operations where water accumulated inside the hollow column these staves separate completely.

At above correct you lot can meet the deterioration of the roof cornice trim, soffit and box axle exposed after we finished removing the aluminum wrapper.

Above and below are photographs of the rotted and carpenter-ant damaged woods column base.

At higher up right you can run across my temporary support jammed under the porch column simply more than important detect that the cavalcade is badly divide. Someone had attempted to "repair" the porch column by attaching a metal band around its base of operations.

H2o running in the column interior soaked the column base and plinth block, rotted those components, and rotted the porch floor and supporting beam below. The corners of the porch floor structure were supported by hollow brick columns.

Water running inside those columns were an engraved invitation to carpenter ants who had moved into the columns too, adding to the excitement.

The brick columns (piers if y'all adopt) supporting the porch were falling apart and needed to be re-built from footings upward (in a higher place left, 1985). I re-used the original bricks just mod mortar.

At the column pinnacle, not wanting the carpenter ants to have an easy access into the porch construction again, I installed a solid, custom-made copper column summit shown in the photo above. You'll too note that the porch floor repair lumber used treated wood. This was later covered with a fascia trim board for improve corrective advent.

At above is one of the same rebuilt brick supporting piers in 2022, iii decades later: withal intact thanks to that copper cap flashing just visible under the blueish trim boards around the porch flooring frame.

Sentry out: there is no condom way to remove badly damaged porch columns similar these without first constructing very secure independent supports for the porch roof - unless you're going to tear off the whole roof construction beginning. In this case the porch roof structure was salvageable: nosotros just needed to rebuild the eaves trough gutters, soffits, and box beam below.

So we supported the roof to allow removal of the damaged porch columns at the left and right porch corners.

In a higher place you can see how we supported this end of the porch roof so that the corner column could be removed for repair or replacement. At this point we've likewise begun repairs of the porch roof gutters and trim. Nosotros but used a telepost (aka "jackpost" that is a telescoping column with a large spiral in 1 stop) to jack the roof just enough to permt removal of the old cavalcade.

Spotter out: Bracing and cross-bracing are critial for safety when jacking a porch or removing columns.

Venting Suggestions for Hollow Lock Stave Woods Columns

While repairing the salvageable and replacing the worst wood columns on a Poughkeepsie New York abode built in 1900 it made sense to pay special attention to flashing at post tops to foreclose water entry from above, venting the hollow column interior to reduce rot and carpenter ant attacks, and to provide a sound and properly fix column base of operations or plinth block, adapted to the slope of the porch.

To vent the column I built a custom plinth block of solid treated lumber and cutting arches at the sides of the cake parallel to the wood grain then as to avoid splitting.

I set the columns with base vent openings to the left and correct sides of the column so that they'd not exist obvious from the street, and I bore my column top vent pigsty near the column top simply on the porch interior side, once again for cosmetic reasons. My original sketch below shows where these vent openings were placed.

At above in my original sketch and below photographed in 2022, thirty years afterwards this renovation, you can see the vent opening at the acme of the round hollow woods column.

Dorsum in 1985, afterward I got ill of repairing the porch roof and gutters (below) it was fourth dimension to either set up or replace the porch columns whose absence was disturbing everyone else.

We removed the scary angled temporary supports and installed temporary wood posts near the porch corners but leaving enough room to install the replacement circular wood columns when they arrived.

Above we run into that the same abode in 2022 needs repairs and maintenance simply I was pleased to run across that my copper-lined eaves trough gutters had protected the box axle and soffits from water damage for three decades.

Above are images of the replacement corner posts that we brought up from the American Woods Column Corporation in Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1985. We matched our original columns that themselves may have come up from this company or its predecessor, depending on when the original porch was constructed. American Wood Cavalcade Corp. has been in business since 1918.

At in a higher place right you'll see the deterioration that tin can appear afterward 30 years of conditions exposure with no maintenance. No one painted these posts subsequently our original installation and paint job back in 1985. This lock-stave hollow wood cavalcade is repairable: h2o has not been running in its interior and I saw no rot on the column whatsoever.

The center columns at this porch were in meliorate shape and could exist re-glued, repaired, and re-used. The corner columns, on inspection, were, well, depressing. We collection down to Grand Street in Brooklyn, New York to purchase well-nigh perfectly-matching replacements for two of our Doric columns that were beyond repair.

The manufacturer glues up the forest stave column and then puts it on a gigantic lathe to cut the column to a profile with perfect entasis.

The repaired porch received the new columns at its corners. At above right is the same home photographed in August, 2022. The holding is for auction and needs at least a roof and exterior painting, just its Doric columned front end porch is still standing. In the ensuing thirty years non one soul has seemed to notice that they are non an exact match for their heart- sisters.

Above left: in 2022 it'due south time to replace those plinth blocks and some of the cavalcade bases, and other column repairs are by due.

I'd recommend using a pre-formed fiberglass cavalcade plinth cake to put an end to rot worries and to improve the intake venting at each column base.

Above is the front porch at 57 S. Grand Artery in Poughkeepsie in August 2022.

Replacement Lock Stave Wood Column Sources & Porch Repair Guides

• American Wood Column Corp., 913 Grand St., Brooklyn, NY 11211, Tel: 718-782-3163 Email: tpl913@verizon.net, Website: http://americanwoodcolumncorp.com/ - this visitor was the source of the replacement lock stave wood columns described in the article to a higher place.
• Architectural Mall, Tel: 877-279-9993, Website: http://world wide web.columnsandbalustrades.com/, provides porch columns made of fiberglass, polymer rock, cobweb reinforced polymer, PVC wrapped columns, Wood-stain grade columns (interior use), aluminum (extruded, uniform diameter), and polyuethane columns. From the website this company's physical address appears to exist a cloak-and-dagger.
• Pacific Columns, Inc., 505 Westward. Lambert Rd Brea, CA 92821, Tel: 800-294-1098, Architectural columns. Annoying talking website.
• Turntech, LLC, 114 Cocalico Creek Rd, Ephrata, PA 17522, Tel: 717.859.5944, Email: info@customturnings.com, Website: http://customturnings.com/ Custom Wood Columns and other products

• Better Homes and Gardens (Eds.), "The Porch Book [at Amazon.com] (Better Homes and Gardens) (Better Homes and Gardens Abode)", Better Homes and Gardens (2011), ISBN-ten: 0470948523, ISBN-13: 978-0470948521
  Features before-and-subsequently photos that inspire yous to give your home's exterior a facelift, Covers amenities that make porches more attractive, like lighting and fans, kitchen areas, decorative ceiling and wall treatments, flooring options, and much more than, Offers pattern construction topics, like using an builder, permit bug, adding entryways, and more than
• Fine Homebuilding (Eds.), "Edifice Porches and Decks (For Pros by Pros)", [at Amazon.com] Taunton Press (2003),
  The For Pros Past Pros titles are compilations of articles from Fine Homebuilding magazine, selected by the editors of the magazine and organized by subject. New articles from recent problems of the magazine accept been added to this edition of Building Porches and Decks. Updated and redesigned throughout, this volume gives builders the very best and current information.
• German, Roger, "Porches and Sunrooms: Planning and Remodeling", [at Amazon.com]
• Hor, "Decks, Porches, and Patios (Home Repair and Comeback, Updated Serial), [at Amazon.com]
• Schmidt, Phil, "Black & Decker: The Complete Guide to Porches & Patio Rooms", [at Amazon.com]

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How To Repair A Round Porch Column,

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